Rainer Deyke wrote:
Stefan Seefeld wrote:
Isn't it abusive to force utf-8 into a std::string ? While it is technically possible the semantics isn't quite the same. operator [] (size_t i) wouldn't return the i'th character any more, at least not for characters outside the ascii range.
I don't think so. In C and C++, the type 'char' represents not only a text character, but also a byte of binary data. For example, when using the iostream library to read binary files, the data will be read as a sequence of 'char's. 'std::string' is the most useful container for blocks of binary data, largely because of the stringstream classes.
I don't agree: When I want to read binary data, i.e. a sequence of 'char's, I don't use std::istream to begin with, as iostreams are all about formatting. Instead I would look at std::streambuf, as that's what encapsulates the device to read from. So, I don't see at all why I would read in binary data from a std::stringstream into a std::string. Regards, Stefan